's bedesmen, and the positive promise of one hundred a year to
each of the twelve old men had its way with most of them. The great
Bunce was not to be wiled away, and was upheld in his orthodoxy by
two adherents. Abel Handy, who was the leader of the aspirants after
wealth, had, alas, a stronger following. No less than five of the
twelve soon believed that his views were just, making with their
leader a moiety of the hospital. The other three, volatile unstable
minds, vacillated between the two chieftains, now led away by the hope
of gold, now anxious to propitiate the powers that still existed.

It had been proposed to address a petition to the bishop as visitor,
praying his lordship to see justice done to the legal recipients of
John Hiram's Charity, and to send copies of this petition and of the
reply it would elicit to all the leading London papers, and thereby
to obtain notoriety for the subject. This it was thought would pave
the way for ulterior legal proceedings. It would have been a great
thing to have had the signatures and marks of all the twelve injured
legatees; but this was impossible: Bunce would have cut his hand off
sooner than have signed it. It was then suggested by Finney that
if even eleven could be induced to sanction the document, the one
obstinate recusant might have been represented as unfit to judge on
such a question,--in fact, as being _non compos mentis_,--and the
petition would have been taken as representing the feeling of the men.
But this could not be done: Bunce's friends were as firm as himself,
and as yet only six crosses adorned the document. It was the more
provoking, as Bunce himself could write his name legibly, and one of
those three doubting souls had for years boasted of like power, and
possessed, indeed, a Bible, in which he was proud to show his name
written by himself some thirty years ago--"Job Skulpit;" but it was
thought that Job Skulpit, having forgotten his scholarship, on that
account recoiled from the petition, and that the other doubters would
follow as he led them. A petition signed by half the hospital would
have but a poor effect.

It was in Skulpit's room that the petition was now lying, waiting such
additional signatures as Abel Handy, by his eloquence, could obtain
for it. The six marks it bore were duly attested, thus:

his his his
Abel X Handy, Gregy X Moody, Mathew X Spriggs,
mark mark